Sometimes I am asked by the blog readers about football in Ukraine. They are interested in how things are going here, what role football plays in life of Ukrainian people… Well I decided to tell you this kind of information after tomorrow's decisive match between Shakhtar and Dynamo Kiev.

Shakhtar – Dynamo Kiev 1:0

The result of yesterday's match – Shakhtar became the champion of Ukraine in this year. If Dynamo won this game they would have good chances to gain the title. But they were perceptibly weaker than their rivals yesterday. So now the last fixture in the Ukrainian championship is not important at all for these two teams.

Best players of the match were as for me: Ilsinho (the goal author) and Fernandinho from Shakhtar and Andriy Shevchenko from Dynamo Kiev.

Ukrainian championships

Normally every new championship causes talks about whether any third force can struggle for the title. And usually a club like Metallist or Dnipro try to impose some struggle only in the first half of season. Then they fail their attempts and gap between the 2nd and 3rd positions in Ukrainian Premier League may even grow to 20 points or something like that.

Dynamo Kiev possesses 13 titles and Shakhtar possesses 5 titles currently. The first title during independence year was taken by Tavria from Simferopol.

So you see our Premier League is not so exciting as the best European Leagues and resembles Scottish one where we see constant battle between Celtic and Rangers.

Football in Ukraine

It is the sport #1 in our country. Many young people play football in courts and schools. Amateur football is very popular among grown-ups who have to work on their jobs. People like to go to the stadiums and root for their favourite team.

I like that our people are not aggressive and there was very small amount of bad accidents on the stadiums starting from the very beginning of Ukrainian football history. Surely Euro-2012 will be a big great holiday for the most part of the country!

The most beloved current Ukrainian footballer is of course Andriy Shevchenko.

Interesting facts

- The best achievements of our football are: winning UEFA Cup Winners' Cup twice by Dynamo Kiev in 1975 and 1986 + UEFA Cup by Shakhtar in the last year.

 

- Best Ukrainian footballers of all times are: Oleg Blohin, Andriy Shevchenko, Leonid Buryak, Sergiy Rebrov, Oleg Luzhnyi, Aleksandr Zavarov, Igor Belanov, Anatoliy Timoshchuk.

 

- Current Shakhtar manager Mirca Lucescu and Dynamo Kiev manager Valeriy Gazzaev own UEFA cups. Gazzaev managed to win the cup with CSKA Moscow several years ago,

 

- The best achievement in Champions League is the semifinal by Dynamo Kiev in 1999/2000. That team could win that league!

 

- He is considered as almost god among fans in Ukraine. His name is Valeriy Lobanovskiy. He was a genius coach. There is a very good monument devoted to Lobanovskiy near Dynamo Stadium (called after his name after his death).

- Regarding national team of Ukraine I can say that the best result was produced by team of Oleg Blohin in World Cup 2006 – the quarterfinal. By the way USSR national team managed by Lobanovskiy got to the final of Euro-88.

Well I can write a lot on this topic but I think it's enough for you. As always you may ask me any questions about football in Ukraine in the comments.

PS Next post will continue my Leeds story in Football Manager 2010.

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